New water filtration system by the inventor of Segway

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink may soon be nonsense verse for arid countries and those hit with polluted drinking supplies. The man who brought you the Segway (that machine that will do your walking for you) has come up with another amazing invention that may be a tad more useful than his Segway.

Dean Kamen has introduced a water purifier that is nothing short of startling. He says this portable filter (think airline bag for size) will take any polluted water and put it through a distilling and condensing process to produce ten gallons of potable water an hour. The filter will operate on a mere 500 watts of electricity (about 2% of the power needed for traditional water purifiers .

Kamen also is producing a generator to provide that electricity. Now these are not to replace your kitchen faucet, as both will be seemingly pricey at $1500 for the purifier and $3700 for the generator. But think of whole villages being able to use them and it becomes more practical.

The filter weighs in at 100 pounds and doesn’t use any chemicals or even filters, bringing maintenance to just above zero. Kamen says the resulting water is cleaner than current bottled water and has even publicly proven his point…don’t ask.